Hello and thank you for visiting AikiWeb, the
world's most active online Aikido community! This site is home to
over 22,000 aikido practitioners from around the world and covers a
wide range of aikido topics including techniques, philosophy, history,
humor, beginner issues, the marketplace, and more.

If you wish to join in the discussions or use the other advanced
features available, you will need to register first. Registration is
absolutely free and takes only a few minutes to complete so sign up today!

In my blogs I am going to attempt to keep a true record of how my training is going with aikido I will give you the Good, The Bad, And the Ugly of it all, and also any personal insight‘s I might have along the way.

I have been training for about a 8 weeks or so give or take I did a few lessons before Christmas, after Christmas break the latter part of Jan I got stuck into training, at first I felt like a lump of lead I could not really understand the movements my hands where every where my feet totally deserting me, and I kept thinking please don’t let anyone notice lol how could they not notice duh, but all I got from the club was just real honest to goodness help.

This really helped with my confidence just people helping everyone out which felt really nice no one is sniggering behind anyone’s back’s. So with my new found positive energy I went for it at the start of every class we do ukemi at every possible angle which is a bit daunting when I could only go forwards at one point, we have even had other aikidōka come and join in the class only to be shocked when we started doing ukemi’s backwards etc, so my sensie always says don’t do it unless you really want to the idea behind it is you can take a fall from any angle or position, at the moment I am the only newbie that is even attempting to do a backward ukemi this Sunday I managed to do it correctly a small triumph for me.

At the end of my Sunday lesson I asked help of a very nice girl she is only 16 and really good at aikido, I have started to learn the 31 jo kata my sensie believes that though using jo and bokken early on will help with other aspects of aikido and I tend to agree there is no reason to wait until 3rd kyu and onwards to learn to use a weapon I found with my jo kata my movement as improved also I am having a greater understanding of my center which is after all important, this in turn as improved my ikkyo.

I have noticed my other newbie students doing Ikkyo and we were all doing it wrong for the life of me I could not understand how my teacher was making this look so easy
So I struggled for a bit then I remembered what sensie was saying keep your center I found if I kept my center and use my movement as one I was doing what he was doing, so what I mean is keep my center to the other student move arms and feet as one bingo I had it better, the other student was in the correct position is arm and shoulder nicely rolled I was in control no power just pure technique.

Hi Phil! Looking forward to reading your posts. I find writing helps me assimilate what I've learned in class, and often leads me to new realizations. I'm glad you'll be sharing "the Good, The Bad, And the Ugly." It's often in the bad and ugly that I have the biggest "aha" moments.